


Maybe You'll Be Lonesome Too

by colonel_bastard



Series: Lodestar [5]
Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Cybernetics, Fantasizing, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:04:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colonel_bastard/pseuds/colonel_bastard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Jim misses him so much he can barely breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe You'll Be Lonesome Too

**Author's Note:**

> written for the one and only [wuffen](http://wuffen.tumblr.com/), the king of the Jim/Silver fandom. I asked him if he had any requests, and he gave me three options: 1) Jim testing the limits of Silver's cybernetics, 2) Jim exploring Silver's body, and 3) masturbating while thinking about each other post-movie. I decided to try for a hat trick and combined all three. I surely hope the results are satisfactory. 
> 
> intended to be a sequel to my fic [Lodestar](http://archiveofourown.org/works/465273), because they definitely totally did it after that "you got the makings of greatness in ya" speech. 
> 
> title is taken from the song [You Belong To Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=berL-80EPmg). Full lyric is: " _I'll be so alone without you / maybe you'll be lonesome too._ " And of course let's not forget the last verse: " _Fly the ocean in a silver plane / see the jungle when it's wet with rain / just remember till you're home again / you belong to me._ " Replace those sentiments about traveling the world with sentiments about traveling the galaxy and you've got a pretty perfect song for this pairing I must say.

-

-

-

Sometimes Jim misses him so much he can barely breathe. 

Fortunately, those times aren’t as often as he had feared. He has plenty of other things to occupy his mind these days, from the rigors of his Academy work to the complicated landscape of navigating friendships with his new classmates. He can hardly remember a time when he had even a single friend his own age, and now he’s surrounded by dozens of them, boys who want to practice sparring and girls who ask him if he needs a study partner for those late night cram sessions. Jim does the best he can, clinging to his mother’s admonishment that he should be friendly and polite, but the gears never seem to click into place. Most of his peers have never even been into deep space, let alone on a harrowing adventure where their life was in danger at every possible moment. Jim still has nightmares about clinging to the mizzen mast, the endless abyss yawning at his back and Mr. Scroop crawling towards him with murder in his eyes. It’s hard to find common ground with people whose worst fear is failing a test.

On top of that, everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows what he’s done. Sometimes it gets downright exhausting, hounded day and night by countless questions about Flint’s trove, what it looked like, what it felt like, how much it was and how awful it must have been to see it lost forever. Jim always plays along; it went on forever, it was so beautiful, it broke his heart to see it destroyed. It seems easier than telling them the truth. 

_I don’t give a fuck about Flint’s trove,_ he wants to scream in their faces. _If you really think gold is the most important thing in the galaxy, then I actually feel sorry for you._ He tries to remind himself that he was like them once, an idiot kid who dreamed of gold and jewels and never once imagined that anything else could fill the hole in his heart like that treasure would. 

_He was like that, too,_ he realizes. _Silver. He thought that all he ever wanted was that stupid treasure, and he spent a lifetime trying to get it._

_Then he threw it all away. For me._

And then Jim misses him so much he can barely breathe. 

No one ever looked at him like Silver did. No one ever told him that he was worth a damn. Everyone who looked at Jim saw a loser, and suddenly there was Silver, who looked at him and saw a hero. If it wasn’t for that, Jim wouldn’t even be here, two years into his Academy training and well on his way to a bright future in the Interstellar Fleet. These days it seems like people are lining up to tell him that his potential is limitless, that he was born to be a spacer of incredible renown, destined to conquer the stars. But no matter how many people see greatness in him now, Jim will never forget that Silver saw it first. 

He’ll never forget Silver, _period._ Even if he wanted to, even if he _tried,_ he knows he’ll never get that old scalawag out of his system. _Good._ That’s exactly how he wants it to be. If the day ever came when he thought he was in danger of forgetting what Silver’s face looked like, or the smell of his skin, or the weight of his body— then Jim wouldn’t hesitate to abandon the Academy and everything he’s ever worked for just so he could go tearing off into the galaxy on a lunatic quest to refresh his memory. He knows it’s only a matter of time before the recollection grows dim; he just hopes to have a ship of his own by then, and maybe orders from the Admiralty to seek out and apprehend known pirates, giving him the perfect excuse to hop from spaceport to spaceport until he finally finds what he’s looking for. 

Right now he’s not that worried about his ability to remember. In fact, right now he has the opposite problem. He can’t keep Silver off his mind. 

Practicing knot-tying in a classroom full of his fellow cadets and all Jim can think about is Silver’s big hands cocooned around his own, guiding his fingers this way and that around the rope, both their heads bent over the task and Silver’s breath warm on the back of Jim’s neck. Breezing through with a perfect score on his small craft piloting assessment, never telling anyone that Silver was right there in the skiff with him, one hand clapped over his hat and the other snaked around the outboard propulsion unit, his arm only inches away from settling over Jim’s shoulders. Cramming for a test on navigational calculations and all he can hear is Silver’s voice, rambling on and on about the stars while the pair of them sit up in the crow’s nest together, a million miles away from anyone or anything else, Silver sitting so close that he becomes Jim’s whole world.

Then comes the lecture on combat injuries and their care, and when the instructor reaches the section about cybernetic prostheses, Jim doesn’t even have a chance. He’s not entirely sure how it’s possible to pay such close attention and yet still be so completely distracted. He wants to absorb everything there is to know about this technology, and at the same time he can still hear every single click and whir, the gears spinning, the pistons churning— can still see that beautiful, bright eye, the color shifting from gold to red to gold again so that even when Silver’s mouth was telling lies, his eye told the truth of what he was feeling. 

Funny that Jim should be thinking of that particular detail just as the instructor begins discussing the latest advancements that have been made in linking mechanical elements to neurological pathways. Within the last decade, not only have they reached a point where facial enhancements can be programmed to respond to emotional impulses, but many cybernetic limbs are now able to register physical sensation. With a shiver, Jim recalls Silver’s howl of pain when he buried the cable clippers in the side of his artificial leg. Those components are definitely capable of receiving stimulation. 

And suddenly all Jim can think about is what Silver would feel if Jim put those mechanical fingers in his mouth. 

The rest of the lecture boils out into white noise. Jim has to focus all of his concentration on the effort to sit still, to hold the sweat in his pores and keep the tremor from his hands. _Class dismissed_ and he’s making a run for it— where, he doesn’t quite know yet. He just knows that he has to find a private place where he can relieve some of this pressure before he actually explodes. 

The number one challenge of living in the Academy dorms is finding somewhere to jerk off in peace. 

He can’t go back to his room. There’s a good chance that his bunkmate will be in there, and Jim is in no mood to deal with _him_ right now. Apparently all Akrennians are rude by nature, but even if they were the most polite race in the galaxy, Jim has no doubt that Boz would be the exception. Loud, obnoxious, and insufferably smug, Boz is the kind of guy who gives you a hard time about keeping your desk light on when he’s trying to sleep, and then the next night brings a girl back to the room and expects you to just _deal with it._ Sometimes in the dark Jim’s mind will wander and he’ll feel himself getting hard— but he would almost literally rather die than let Boz catch him masturbating. Not only would he never hear the end of it, but neither would anyone else in the whole school. Fuck Boz. Jim’s applying for a room transfer at the end of the semester. 

He can’t go to the showers. They’re far too big and open, designed to accommodate at least a dozen cadets at a time, the acoustics doing no favors to anyone trying to be discreet. Jim has heard his share of action in there, and while he’s in no way offended or annoyed by it, he simply can’t imagine doing it himself. Maybe it’s because he still has this strange, creeping fear that anyone who hears him will be able to read his mind and know what he’s thinking about, _who_ he’s thinking about. Maybe it’s because he still doesn’t trust himself not to moan Silver’s name, calling out to him as if he’ll be able to hear it halfway across the galaxy and know that Jim still thinks about him every single day. 

Fuck. He’s gotta find a place, _now._

Walking as fast as he can without running, Jim makes his way to his usual secret spot: a rarely-used lavatory in the lower levels of Epsilon Hall. Most of the classes held in this building are for upperclassmen, and most of the classes for upperclassmen are held out in the field. On most days it’s relatively deserted, and Jim has the place to himself as he heads down to his hideout. He’s lucky that he started banning Morph from coming to class with him; the last thing he needs right now is to be struggling to think of a way to get rid of the little shapeshifter for a while. Fortunately Morph is more than happy to nap in Jim’s desk drawers while his master is at study, so Jim is alone. He does a quick check up and down the halls to make sure the coast is clear before he ducks inside. Five urinals and five stalls. Jim takes the stall on the far end, locking himself in and hanging his book bag on the hook set at eye level. 

Then he shoves his uniform trousers down around his ankles and sits down heavily on the toilet seat. His cock is already rock-hard and standing at attention, but he doesn’t take hold of it just yet. Instead he closes his eyes, and with a shaky sigh, surrenders to the thoughts he’s been desperately holding at bay since he left the lecture hall. 

_Many cybernetic limbs are now able to register physical sensation._ He doesn’t know why he never thought about it before. Maybe he just had too much else to think about already. They only ever had the one night together in the galley, but Jim experienced more in that short amount of time than he ever had in the fifteen years leading up to it, so that even two years later he feels like he’s still processing what happened. For months all he could think about was Silver’s _tongue_ , imagining it stroking every inch of his body, broad and wet and warm, coating him with spit from his head to his toes while Silver moaned and told him how good he tasted. He fantasized about whether Silver had any more hair on his body; sometimes he thought not, while other times he pictured a thick, curly patch in the center of his chest, the same ruddy chestnut color as what was under his bandana, a tempting trail of it leading all the way down along the span of his belly until it disappeared into the top of his trousers. Most of all he dreamed about Silver’s cock, huge and hot and heavy against his own, all wrapped up in the grip of Silver’s big strong hand on the best night of Jim’s entire life.

_Ah, just look, Jimmy boy. We fit together. We was made to fit together._

Jim’s involuntary groan sounds laser cannon-loud in the empty bathroom. He bites down hard on his lower lip, his nostrils flaring as he tries to take deep breaths and stay calm. He might be alone in here for now, but there’s no guarantee that someone won’t walk in at any moment. He can’t get carried away. He can’t get noisy. 

For the first time ever, he’s not thinking about Silver’s tongue or his hair or even his cock. Instead, he’s thinking about the scattering of small, disc-shaped bruises he found on his ass and back the next morning, the marks left behind by five mechanical fingers lifting him up onto his toes and dragging him into kiss after kiss after kiss. Silver’s cybernetic hand was roaming all over his body that night, but he never stopped to think that it might have been for more than just leverage. 

_Could he feel me?_ Jim is starting to tremble, sitting there on the toilet seat with his arms wrapped around himself to keep from shattering into pieces. _Could he feel the heat in my skin?_ God, he was so hot that night, everything in him burning like he was being consumed by the atmosphere on reentry. Silver was hot, too, panting like a furnace, his face and neck and chest drenched with sweat. Even the palm of his good hand was already slick before he gave it a coat of saliva to make it slicker. 

_No. Not his good hand. His flesh hand. The other one is good, too._

Jim concentrates on the cybernetic hand, calling every single detail to the surface of his memory. He can see it now, each digit tipped with a flat, circular pad— the mechanical equivalent of a finger print. And it seems so obvious in retrospect; there’s no way those pads aren’t packed with sensors. For fuck’s sake, he saw it with his own eyes, Silver yelping and yanking his hand away when it was struck by debris from the supernova. If he registered that pain, he certainly registered the tremors in Jim’s body when he held him that night. Hell, he could probably feel Jim’s heartbeat in those fingertips, beating against his skin at five different points of contact. 

The fantasy from the lecture hall comes back in an overwhelming rush. Jim wants to put those fingers in his mouth, one by one. He wants to rub his tongue across every sensitized pad and he wants Silver to tell him _exactly_ how it feels. If he had the chance, he would suck on those sensor pads until he forgot the taste of anything else. 

But since he doesn’t have the chance— not yet, not _yet_ — since he can’t put his hands on the only person he’s ever wanted to touch, the only person he’ll ever want again— he touches himself instead. 

His mouth opens in a soundless cry as he finally takes hold of his aching cock. And just like that, he’s not in an Academy bathroom stall anymore. He’s where he belongs, out in deep space, the entire galaxy unfolding before him and John Silver standing beside him. It’s a little bit scary and a little bit thrilling to realize that he found his soulmate when he was only fifteen. The way most people talk about it, Jim would have thought he’d spend decades searching for someone that made him feel so complete. The way his mother talked about, he would have thought such a person didn’t even exist. 

But there’s no doubt in his mind. He’s never been so sure of anything in his life, and he’ll happily spend the rest of that life, if that’s what it takes, to track Silver down and tell him so. His mother still asks him when he’s going to bring a nice girl home with him on one of his visits. He still doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s never going to happen, that he’s already found the only person he’ll ever want to bring with him anywhere, and that person is neither nice nor a girl. Technically he’s only even half a person at all, the other half comprised of gears and pistons and one beautiful bright eye and five incredible sensor pads and fuck fuck _fuck_ sometimes Jim misses him so much he can barely breathe. 

He hunches down over his lap, the toilet seat digging into his ass, one hand pumping hard and fast between his legs while the other reaches out to brace against the solid wall to his left. To his right is the panel that’s connected to the rest of the stalls, and if he tried to brace himself against that then the whole rickety structure would start rattling like pots and pans. He’s already having a hard enough time keeping himself quiet without having to worry about something like that. 

He loses himself in the memory of Silver. Big man, strong man, fierce as an ion storm and just as powerful. Jim relished every glimpse he ever had of his brawny body— his sleeve pushed up to expose his burly forearm, his sweat-damp shirt clinging to the outline of his massive shoulders, even the time he stepped in a spill and had to take off his shoe and sock to reveal a big, broad foot, the toes studded with claws to match his hand. Jim never got a chance to see all of him. He could have spent hours exploring every last inch of that vast landscape— he _will_ spend hours exploring it— but in the meantime all he has to go on are those fleeting glances and his own imagination. 

Of course, he’s always had an exceptionally vivid imagination. 

He jerks himself slow and sweet, savoring every stroke as he lets his mind wander over the possibilities beneath Silver’s shirt and trousers. After that lecture about cybernetics, he’s dwelling now on the places where the metal meets flesh, where Silver becomes the cyborg. He always wondered about it, even before his fascination with Silver progressed to something deeper. For him to have lost an eye, an arm, and a leg all on the same side of his body, the damage must have been catastrophic. The repairs, then, must also be extensive. Jim imagines the jagged map of scar tissue that must span the length of his chest and back, wonders how many of his ribs are made of titanium, how many organs replaced with bioengineered substitutes. He knows that the injuries didn’t affect Silver between his legs— that much, at least, he’s seen with his own eyes, touched with his own hands, and it was flesh and blood all the way through. 

He’s deep in contemplation on whether or not the skin around the edges of the prostheses might be especially sensitive to contact with his tongue when suddenly the bathroom door swings open and someone else comes inside. 

Jim has never moved faster or with greater stealth. Sucking a breath into his lungs to silence his gasping, he yanks his feet up and plants the heels of his boots on the rim of the toilet seat, swiftly rendering himself invisible. His cock bobs and scrapes painfully in the space between his thighs and belly, but he doesn’t dare touch it, not even to reposition it. 

In total agony, he listens to the sound of trousers being unzipped and the subsequent splash of urine coming down on porcelain. Suffocating, Jim releases his trapped breath in a slow, careful exhale, drawing in an inhale with the same deathly caution. All it takes is one cough or grunt and then it’s game over. He hugs his legs to his chest, his forehead digging into his knees, his eyes stinging with frustrated tears. _Fuck_ his balls are fucking _throbbing_ but he is not going to make a single sound.

 _Easy does it, Jimbo,_ Silver whispers somewhere deep inside him. _Steady as she goes._

It helps. Jim squeezes his eyes shut and remembers hurrying down into the darkened galley, barely able to keep their hands off each other, praying that no one else would be down there that night. They were fortunate enough to be alone, but looking back on it now Jim has no doubt that even _that_ wouldn’t have stopped them. They just would have had to be quiet. Jim imagines it that way, imagines Silver’s hand on him and he can’t make a sound, has to keep his own hand clapped over his mouth to catch the moans. 

Now he shoves his knuckles in his mouth and bites down hard. The pain keeps him grounded, keeps him focused. He hears the trousers zip back up again and then the hum of the sonic sanitizer, _hey, at least the guy washed his hands._

Even after the door opens and closes again, Jim stays huddled on the toilet seat, not daring to make a sound just yet. When it’s quiet like this and his eyes are closed, he can almost believe that Silver is somewhere close by, just out of reach but near enough that Jim can feel the weight of his presence. Silver could fill a room just by walking into it. Jim wonders where he is right at this moment, wonders if there’s anyone in that presence and whether they know that they’re the luckiest person in the galaxy because of it. 

It’s funny, but Jim never worries about Silver finding someone else. He supposes that when someone gives up their lifelong dream and throws away the loot of a thousand worlds just to save your sorry ass, you know you’re pretty much set for life. 

_That treasure cost him an arm and a leg and an eye besides,_ Jim realizes. _And then he gave it up. At the end of it all, he lost those limbs for me._

He buries his face against his knees to muffle the sound that wrenches out of him, half-laugh, half-sob. 

_You old scalawag. I love you, too._

He drops his feet back down to the floor and takes himself in hand again. He won’t last much longer now. He’s ready to burst, body and soul, and this time when he starts pumping he pretends that it’s Silver’s hand there between his legs. He’s not nearly strong to recreate that powerful grip, but he does what he can, knitting his fingers together so he can use both hands to squeeze himself with all the force he can muster. It’s so tight, so hard, so good— the pleasure coils up in his belly, taut and trembling, spiraling towards release. 

When he gets close like this, when he’s right on the edge, he always imagines that, wherever he is in the whole range of the galaxy, Silver is touching himself and thinking of Jim. Jim knows that he does it, he just _knows_ , and he’d like to think that every once in a while the stars align and they do it at the same time, that they come together like they did that night in the galley, when Silver said he was special and Jim believed him. 

_Think of me,_ Jim projects out into the universe. _I’m thinking of you._

Then he doubles down with all his strength, and in the next second he comes, big and bright and bone-deep, Silver’s name on his lips. It’s so good that he barely has the presence of mind to reach around with a cupped hand to catch the splatter of his release. He’s glad that he does; it’s a bitch to get jizz out of these stupid uniforms. 

Breathing hard, he slumps against the wall to his right. For a moment he actually feels content. And when he closes his eyes, he can see the stars. 

The moment doesn’t last. Gravity kicks in and Jim comes back down to the surface, and with a sigh he wipes himself off and pulls up his trousers. He slings his book bag over his shoulder and goes out to wash his hands, checking his face in the mirror to make sure it isn’t too flushed. He looks all right— except for his hair, which he mussed into hopeless disarray when he was trying not to make any noise in his stall. He licks his palms and grooms it back into some semblance of normalcy. By the time he gets back to his dorm, he’s somehow managed to pull himself almost all of the way together. He’s only missing that one particular piece, but he knows he’ll get that back someday. He just has to be patient. 

As soon as he walks into his room, Boz sets right in with his whining. 

“I don’t know what the fuck Trasselbeck is thinking. Since when have we ever had to write a paper on one of the stupid guest lectures? I wasn’t even paying attention, for fuck’s sake.” 

“I’m sure you’ll bullshit your way through it somehow,” Jim says absently. “Like always.” 

Boz gives an annoyed snarl, his ears pressed back and his fangs exposed. Jim ignores him. He just goes over to his desk and sits down, slinging his book bag to the floor and tugging open the top drawer to be greeted by Morph’s delighted chirps. As the shapeshifter dances in happy circles around his head, Jim fishes out his data PADD and spots a notification alert down in the corner of the screen. Must be the assignment that Boz is bitching about. Jim taps the icon and the message opens up for him to read. 

They have to write a paper about the recent technological advancements made in the field of cybernetic prostheses. 

Jim covers his mouth with his hand to hide his cocky grin. He’s come a long way since he was the asshole kid who loved to brag, but damn. 

Talk about an easy A. 

 

 

 

__________end.


End file.
